National Defence Committee on Feb. 1st, 2011

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Good afternoon, everyone.

Welcome, everybody. I call the meeting to order.

We will start meeting number 43 of the Standing Committee on National Defence.

I want to welcome today's witnesses. From the Offshore Helicopter Safety Inquiry, we have the inquiry commissioner, Mr. Wells, and also Ms. Fagan, inquiry counsel. Thank you for being with us.

From Seacom International Inc., we have Mr. Clay and Mr. Rodriguez. Merci d'être avec nous aujourd'hui.

We have an hour. I will give Mr. Wells of the Offshore Helicopter Safety Inquiry five to seven minutes to do his presentation, and then we'll give the floor to Seacom International Inc. for five to seven minutes. Members will be ready to ask questions at that time.

Thank you, Mr. Wells. You have the floor.

[Robert Wells, Inquiry Commissioner, Inquiry into Matters Respecting Helicopter Passenger Safety for Workers in the Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Area, Offshore Helicopter Safety Inquiry]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for inviting me.

As we have spent a year and a half studying offshore helicopter safety on the inquiry--and of course, response times are important in that--I felt that it may be helpful to your committee and to this group if you were able to ask questions of me, and that it could be helpful in the decisions and the recommendations that you will make in due course to your colleagues in the House of Commons.

With me today, as you've said, Mr. Chairman, is Ms. Anne Fagan. She is one of the inquiry counsel. The other, Mr. John Roil, is not able to be here today.

Ms. Carla Foote is also here. She is the person who has guided us in the last year and a half in our relations with the media.

Very briefly, everyone, I suppose, knows of the Atlantic Accord. That's when the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador and the Government of Canada, about 26 or 27 years ago, agreed that the offshore would be jointly managed. To jointly manage it, they have set up a board called the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board, usually referred to as C-NLOPB, which is a mouthful until you get used to saying it.

When there is a serious accident or incident in the offshore, that board is required under the legislation to call and have a public inquiry. That inquiry was set up shortly after the crash in March 2009, which killed 17 people in our offshore.

There are many facets to the inquiry itself, because it deals with offshore matters and safety generally, but it is largely focused on helicopter transport, which is most practical and really much more convenient, of course, for everyone concerned. It's not exclusively the only way you can get people back and forth, but ship transport or boat transport, when you're talking about hundreds of kilometres, is both slow and rough going in our ocean.

There are a couple of things I should bring to your attention at the outset. One is that the Transportation Safety Board of Canada is examining that accident from the technical point of view--from the point of view of what actually caused the accident and the various related factors--but they're also entitled to comment on things like life-saving methods and the suits that people wear if they should be immersed in water if a helicopter goes down. On a lot of things there is some overlap. I, of course, was not able--nor did I wish to, nor did I have the staff--to look at anything that is within the principal role of the Transportation Safety Board.

They're going to report eight days from today, and that report will be very interesting.

I have completed phase one. Phase two will be an examination of the Transportation Safety Board's findings to see if there are any additional recommendations or observations that I may wish to make to, say, C-NLOPB.

So I can't deal with or touch anything to do with the Transportation Safety Board's primary role. The other limitation is that I can't advise and I couldn't look into what the Department of National Defence does--not so much what it does, but where it stations its equipment and how it is organized. This is for the simple reason that when the Atlantic Accord was signed and the enabling legislation passed, there was nothing delegated to the board that would impact on the Department of National Defence and its search and rescue modes and what it does. That was outside my terms of reference, but I do want to make one point, and I'm glad of the opportunity to make it publicly. Although I couldn't inquire into what DND does in search and rescue, I found DND to be one of the most helpful entities that interacted with the commission.

We had a senior officer, Colonel Drover, come from Ottawa to explain the role of DND. Later in the year--this past summer--DND took me and two counsel on a daylight practice mission and on a nighttime mission. That was very valuable to the three of us, and to me especially, in learning how search and rescue actually works, rather than reading about it or being told about it.

It was one of the best days, actually, in the whole of the work of the commission, and as a Canadian citizen I want to say how proud I am of these people, who take daily risks without fuss and furor when they are engaged in rescues. I do want to make that point.

To come back to the inquiry, search and rescue arose really as a formal issue after the tragedy of the Ocean Ranger, and that's nearly 27 years ago now. There was a five-person commission set up. I have one of the recommendations here in front of me and I will read it to you if I can find it—

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Mr. Wells, I would ask that you go ahead and conclude. The seven minutes just passed, but if the members agree, I'll give you another minute, because it's interesting for all the members.

Please go ahead.

[Robert Wells]

This is, I suppose, an occupational hazard.

The Ocean Ranger inquiry recommended that there be a search and rescue based in St. John's, or as they put it, in the port nearest to the offshore. St. John's happens to be that port. The inquiry said it should be “provided by either government or industry”.

What happened over the years was that there was no dedicated helicopter provided for search and rescue. Rather, there was a standby helicopter that had to be reconfigured before it set off. This was important in the tragedy that occurred in March. Word came that a helicopter was in trouble, and then it very shortly afterward crashed, but a helicopter had to be reconfigured. That took 45 minutes, so it didn't leave the ground until 50 minutes after the word came in. The accident was 30 nautical miles offshore, which is about 45 kilometres. There was a 50-minute delay before the helicopter took off, and then it took 22 minutes to get to the scene, so it was about 76 minutes before it got there and was in a position to rescue.

The other thing I should mention--and I'll mention very quickly why this is important--is that my inquiries have led me to believe that our offshore waters are the most hostile in the offshore oil world. The North Sea is the nearest comparator, but our waters are colder than the North Sea because of the Labrador current. Because of the jet stream pulling in low-pressure systems, our winds tend to be consistently higher. Our waters are bitterly cold, the winds are high, and fog is frequent, so the whole panoply of the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador offshore is, I believe, more dangerous than offshore areas elsewhere in the world because of natural conditions.

It means that we, in my opinion--and I've made this very clear in my report--need search and rescue that is second to none. As I learned more, and as I learned more about the North Sea, I began to learn that response times in the North Sea and elsewhere in the world--and interestingly, elsewhere in Canada, although we and Nova Scotia have the only offshores in Canada at this time--are a lot less than the hour we had. In the Gulf of Mexico, response times were 15 to 20 minutes instead of the hour that we had. It was because the helicopter as provided by the industry had to be reconfigured. This concerned me.

After reading what happened in other jurisdictions--not in every jurisdiction, because I tended to concentrate on the North Sea as the nearest comparator--and seeing the evidence that was laid before the inquiry about search and rescue times and what was possible, I became very concerned. I made an interim recommendation, which the terms of reference allowed me to do, in February of last year, 11 months ago. I recommended that although the inquiry was not finished, we should start right away to work toward a 15-minute to 20-minute response and a fully dedicated helicopter.

I must say that the C-NLOPB board rose to the occasion, and the oil operators rose to the occasion. I knew that it would take some time to do this, because a helicopter would have to be acquired--another S-92--in the circumstances. That took until July. To get to the 15-minute to 20-minute response time, there has to be a special hangar, and the helicopter has to be ready to go at all times. At the moment, we're down to half an hour, but when that hangar is constructed and everything is in place, we will be down to 15 minutes or 20 minutes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

I want to thank you. Do you want to add something, just briefly?

[Robert Wells]

I was going to say that in offshore safety, almost everything is interrelated. You have the speed of response, because people don't live indefinitely long in our bitterly cold waters and high seas, even in the suits they have on. The other important thing is training for the people who are the passengers in the helicopter, training and knowledge about what to do if you have to ditch. A crash is a different thing, but if you have to ditch and you don't know what you have to do to save your life and get out of the helicopter.... They overturn because all the weight is in the top--the two engines, the gearbox, and the rotors--and almost always, especially in high seas, they tip over. You are then submerged. You have to be able to knock out the window, fix your disorientation, keep your head, and keep your wits about you. You have to be trained to do that, because an untrained person, in my view, would have very little chance of survival.

Those are some of the interrelated things. I won't take up any more time, but I would be happy to answer any questions provided they don't get outside the terms of my study.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Thank you very much. I'm sure the members will have a lot of questions.

Before that, I'll give the floor to Mr. Clay or Mr. Rodriguez.

You have seven minutes.

[Paul Clay, President, Seacom International Inc.]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman and committee, for inviting us today.

I'm not as well known, obviously, as Mr. Wells, so I'll give you a 30-second brief history of who I am and what we do.

My name is Paul Clay. I have a company called Seacom International, and we're an emergency preparedness company located in St. John's, Newfoundland. We've been here for 15 years. About 70% of our business is related to oil and gas and marine, and the other 30% is mining, etc. In other words, they're large industries that operate in quite often remote and dangerous locations.

Because of that, we have a lot of insight into how emergency preparedness is managed in other countries--specifically, the physical response itself, be it by helicopter, by boat, or through a combination; how long it might take; what the standards or norms are in other countries; and how to interpret some of the information that one may look at from other countries, which can at times be very confusing. One may often see a response time of 15 minutes or 30 minutes or 45 minutes, but there are reasons for those response times, so we have to keep a little bit of an open mind as we interpret the data.

That's enough about who we are.

What I'd like to do is move forward. What I'm going to talk about today and answer questions on.... As I said, we have a lot of information, but we can look at specific areas of the world—Australia, obviously Canada, the Republic of Ireland, Mexico, Norway, the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland, the United States, Brazil, Venezuela, and other countries where we've worked--where we have specific data and information about search and rescue response times. We can look at not only the actual time, but in a lot of cases the reasons those times exist.

Of course, one must always consider that a number of factors go into determining what a response time may be, one being the distance to the location where the response may be anticipated. Just to give you an example, in the oil and gas industry we're now operating more than 500 kilometres offshore. That's a long way. It substantially limits the time one might have on location to physically do a search and rescue operation. Helicopters can go only so far.

On the onshore side of Newfoundland and Labrador, we have extremely large projects operating in Labrador in remote locations. Projects coming, such as lower Churchill, for example, will, if they go ahead, have maybe 2,000 to 3,000 people and operate in very remote locations, with lots of helicopters and lots of potential for problems.

Again, when one considers search and rescue response times and physical locations of helicopters and all that sort of stuff, it's very important to look outwards and in, not necessarily inwards and out. In other words, maybe it's not what the Department of National Defence has to do or what the oil industry has to do, but what the needs are of the greater community that is expecting us to provide service to them--so 530 kilometres from Gander and some 435 kilometres from St. John's, which is a difference of about 40 minutes in response time if you look at dispatching a helicopter from St. John's or a helicopter from Gander.

There are a number of factors that must be considered when interpreting the data that we will give you today, such as the area of responsibility and how big it is. How big is the area that we must respond to? We have three aircraft in Gander, two of them operational, that have to respond to an enormous geographical area. There are the incident patterns: where do most of the problems occur? Are they marine? Are they terrestrial? Are they fishing boats? Are they oil industry? A fishing boat with a crew of five is five people who may have a problem. An oil and gas installation could have two people on board, and you could lose the installation in five minutes, so response times become critical. As the Honourable Mr. Wells has pointed out, two or three minutes in the waters of Newfoundland is a long time.

Is it a land versus marine response? What is the population to be protected? Is it one person, two hundred, a thousand? There is also the type of industry those services must be provided to, and there's the number of search and rescue assets, such as helicopters, that may or may not be available.

I do have specific data for each country. I'm not sure whether you would like me to address those now, very briefly....

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

You still have three minutes.

[Paul Clay]

Okay. I'll go through the physical response times very quickly, but again, bear in mind the points I made.

In Australia, as an example, search and rescue is governed, as in most countries, by the Department of Defence or the federal government. They have the mandate to respond, but there are no physical assets dedicated to the civil marine and oil and gas industries. They have search and rescue efforts of opportunity. In other words, if an emergency happens, they have some 60 fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft they can deploy to a given location, depending on what they are doing currently.

What does that mean? When they say they have a “wheels-up” time of 30 minutes, the time it takes to launch the helicopter, that's 30 minutes to find a civil aircraft and to launch that aircraft to a location, if one is available. However, the defence resources are not dedicated to oil and gas; they are dedicated to air force response, primarily when pilots are in training.

So the Australian Defence Force has a 30-minute wheels-up response time. Civil search and rescue units launch within five minutes to one hour; however, the five minutes is questionable, because it really depends on how the aircraft is configured and what that aircraft will do. Some of these search and rescue assets are not, as you might imagine, a Cougar helicopter or a helicopter from Gander or somewhere else, but they have five minutes to one hour. Others, in other parts of the country, launch in 15 minutes. Other oil and gas operators have no response times because there are no aircraft that can respond on their behalf. It's all done by aircraft of opportunity.

In the U.S.A. 30 minutes is the standard. If you're looking at the federal government, the United States Coast Guard, you're looking at a 30-minute response. They have 30 minutes to get up in the air. Then they have a number of hours to be physically on location. However, private industry also participates in search and rescue for marine operations. The Cougar is launched in operation in the Gulf of Mexico and has a response time of 20 minutes in the day and 45 minutes at night. Chevron has a fleet of some 17 helicopters that launch in 45 minutes day and night. However, they only can do medevacs; they can't do search and rescue and they can't fly at night, etc., so again one must consider all the factors when looking at these numbers.

With regard to Mexico, one would think that Mexico would have a terrible response infrastructure. There are some 5,000 people working on installations in two regions, meaning 10,000 in total, and there is a fleet of 27 helicopters to service them. None are equipped for search and rescue, so the military do that on their behalf, but their wheels-up time is 40 minutes, day and night. Their response requirements are somewhat limited because each installation has a doctor on board, so if there's an urgent medevac to be conducted, a doctor on board can physically attend to the patient much more than could be done in other areas.

In the United Kingdom, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency times are 15 minutes between 0800 and 2200 and 45 minutes between 2200 and 0800. Those assets, though, are now civil assets: the coast guard manages the operation, but the assets are owned by private helicopter companies. In many ways that type of operation is a lot easier to manage, because they don't have the restrictions that a federal department might.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Do you want to conclude, Mr. Clay?

[Paul Clay]

The Royal Air Force wheels-up time is 15 minutes, but it is up to 45 minutes in the evening. In Norway, it is 15 minutes by day and night. The assets are located physically offshore at or near the installations, so they can be there very quickly. The federal resources in Norway are managed by a Canadian company, CHC Helicopter, or operated by them. The Republic of Ireland has response times of 15 minutes and 45 minutes for day and evening respectively.

In Canada, of course, we know that we have a federal response of two hours at night. Cougars are currently down to 30 minutes and 45 minutes, and that will come down shortly.

That's the information in a nutshell. I'd be happy to take any questions to try to clarify some of those points for you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Thank you very much.

I will give the floor to Mr. Simms.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Thank you, Chair, and thank you to our guests.

Mr. Wells, it's nice to finally get to speak to you in person after reading so much about you and the work that you've done. I think a lot of us appreciate what you've done over the past while. You gave us a great little précis of what you've worked on in the past year or so. As well, the speech was so good you brought the lights down. There you go; it was very good.

I want to ask you, though, and I want to generalize to a point where.... With regard to the situation that occurs offshore, Mr. Clay alluded earlier to the large number of people who work in the offshore industry. I appreciate that fact. When it comes to the Department of National Defence, there is a very broad area. It's what they call the SRR, the search and rescue region, as you know. There may be two fishermen in trouble on the northeast coast off Bonavista. There might be 200 people in trouble across Hibernia. Thousands of people travel the gulf every day. On my first time on the job in 2004, the first thing I heard about was a medevac in northern Labrador, in Nain. It's incredible. The fact that search and rescue is tasked to do medevac as well certainly makes it an intense place to be, as you've experienced, and as I have too.

What I want to know--and maybe you can allude to the North Sea example as a good comparator--is where the responsibility is for private industry, as opposed to the government resources of the Department of National Defence. In other words, where is DND's role when it comes to the offshore operations?

[Robert Wells]

I think the primary responsibility, certainly for first response, should be and is with the oil operators. To my understanding and from my visit to the North Sea, Norway, and the U.K., the oil operators are very much involved in first response.

With regard to the North Sea, you can approach an oil installation or a downed helicopter from both sides of the North Sea. There are various countries involved--Denmark, Norway, and the U.K. from the English, Scottish, and Shetlands sides--and there are helicopters on the installations, so you can get a quick convergence onto a disaster scene in the North Sea, more so than probably anywhere else in the world, and certainly more so than we can, because our helicopter can come from only one direction and we have no helicopters stationed offshore.

I see DND as being the backup. My understanding is that when things go wrong, it is DND out of the Halifax office in this region that has the primary responsibility to direct even the private SAR helicopter owned by the companies. As an example--

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

I'm sorry to interrupt, but I don't have much time.

I'd love to hear you go on, but here's the question. Since it's the S-92 and you're looking at a vertical lift rescue operation, do you see DND providing top cover--the fixed-wing element of a search and rescue operation--most of the time, or maybe all of the time?

[Robert Wells]

I do, and maybe that mindset has been brought about by the fact that it's what actually happens. The oil operators have no top cover, no fixed-wing aircraft, so therefore it's DND. When the Cougar crash occurred, fortunately there was a Provincial Airlines ice-spotting plane in the area. It provided a degree of top cover, but the DND top cover arrived very quickly, relatively, from Greenwood.

In the course of this, I have seen top cover and overall direction as coming from DND and first response as coming from the oil operators.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

I see what you mean. I think the service provided by Provincial Airlines during the whole thing makes them one of the unsung heroes.

You mentioned the harsh climate, and there's no doubt that a good comparator is the North Sea in this particular situation. Going back to that one, obviously the reduced response time—and this is a hard thing to say—is more essential for a harsher climate like this than it would be otherwise, simply for the sake of survival against hypothermia.

[Robert Wells]

Absolutely.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Obviously a nearer fixed-wing element--something stationed, say, in Gander--would be ideal. You don't have to respond to that.

[Robert Wells]

No, I won't.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

That's my own little bit of politics.

When it comes to the recommendations, you mentioned the transport report that's coming out about eight days from now.

[Robert Wells]

Yes, it's from the Transportation Safety Board.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Beyond that, am I right that you're going to have more recommendations?

[Robert Wells]

Yes. What I have to do with counsel is examine the Transportation Safety Board report. Of course, I will invite the public and those who play a part in the industry to respond also, because it is a public inquiry. Then we can draw conclusions as to what I might be able to recommend to C-NLOPB arising out of the board's report. I have no idea what they're going to say. There may be nothing, or there may be very meaty aspects. I don't know.